Parents, Take Charge!

The preliminary results of a research study was reported at the 2012 Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Boston.  These results show that for the 10 top pediatric conditions, children accounted for 60% of patients but only 12% of the clinical drug trials. This is pretty scary when you consider that decisions about drug treatment for [...]

I promised you some important facts about stress during this stress awareness month.  In my last blog I wrote about how stress cancels joy.  Here are more very important facts:   Stress in children is currently a largely unrecognized and untreated problem and is reaching epidemic  proportions. This high level of stress is the trigger for [...]

A mom spoke to me recently about her pre-school son.  When she described his symptoms, I told her,  “Your son is showing signs of stress.   We need to find out where this stress is coming from.”  “How can that be?  She asked horrified.  “He is only three years old!  What has he got to be [...]

We all know that tummy aches in children can often be a sign of emotional distress.  The child may be feeling afraid or sad or angry and their tummy starts to hurt.   Or they may be nervous about a test or a speech and they describe this as having ‘butterflies in my stomach.’ So if [...]

Our children are growing up in an incredibly competitive world. From the moment that they wake up until they go to sleep, each and every day, they are competing, no matter how old they are. Think about it.  Starting from a very early age kids are continuously competing against others to show how smart they are.  Parents reinforce [...]

People ask me why I call my program  Parents,Take Charge! and Teachers, Take Charge!   ‘Take Charge of what?’ they ask me.   I tell them that it’s about parents and teachers Taking Charge! of the  wellbeing of their children’s bodies, brains and spirits. First and foremost parents and teachers need to Take Charge of the stressful, [...]

So often we find ourselves making decisions and trying treatments that do not bring the hoped-for result when trying to help our children overcome their learning, behavior or mood challenges.  In many instances this disappointment is due to the fact that we started off with outdated information which caused us to ask the wrong questions [...]

When I asked a focus group I conducted with kids between 7 and 11 years of age, what their top three stresses are, they all agreed the No. 1 stress in their lives is achievement stress, as discussed in my previous blog,  The Lower the Stress, the Higher the Grades.  I could have guessed that,  [...]

In my previous blog, If You Want To Know About Stress,  Ask the Kids,  I indicated that it was the first of a 3-part series on what children in a focus group told me about stress.   As I started to write this second part today, I realized that there is so much vitally important information [...]

If you want to know the real truth about anything, described in graphic and honest detail, ask kids.  That’s exactly what a TV station and I did in South Africa – we conducted a focus group with children between the ages of seven and twelve to discover how they interpret stress and what they do [...]